Somebody Drew Hitler in a Headlock and It Must Be Noted: Sketches of the Internet

by Kenny Cooper

Half of what makes comics awesome is the art.  A lot of what makes comic art awesome is sketches.  Sketches are fun to draw and fun to look at.  The horrific monstrosity you see above is my attempt at a sketch but there are countless professional artists out there on the web that you can find that would blow you away.  I’d like to highlight a few right now.

Chris Samnee (of Thor: The Mighty Avenger, The Mighty) is a rising star in the comic book world.  Currently, he’s being tapped to draw Captain America and Bucky but that doesn’t stop him from churning out sketch after sketch week after week.  Samnee likes to sketch primarily in black and white and that’s great because he’s an artist that really gets how to make a great monochromatic image pop.  Looking at his art, one can see Samnee liberally uses negative space to fill in his art.  Looking at his sketches closely and seeing the nuts and bolts of what he does, it’s astounding to realize how looks like a meaningless blotch or scribble can unify with other meaningless blotches and scribbles to form a fantastic piece of art.

Francesco Francavilla is currently the artist for Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, has just completed his run on Detective Comics with Jock and Scott Snyder, and will follow Snyder into the new Swamp Thing series.  His artwork is much looser and impressionistic than a lot of artists, leaving a very moody and striking image.  His sketches are in color, but mostly stick to a darker scheme of blacks, oranges, reds, and yellows.  His subjects are usually in the pulpier rang: from Batman and the Shadow to The Twilight Zone and the Daleks.  His concepts of color and overall design make from very distinct and wonderfully signature sketches.

Joe Quinones is known mostly as the artist for the Green Lantern strip in Wednesday Comics a few years back.  Quinones has a style that seems to be a blending of the more detailed “realistic” style and the more expressionist “cartoony” style.  His faces have the detail of the former while the expressive quality of the latter.  A lot of this is helped by photo references which he helpfully often posts alongside his finished product.  Half the fun of his sketches is looking Quinones in ridiculous poses he’ll later translate into his characters.  Like Francavilla, Quinones evokes something retro in his art though his feels more clean and wholesome, like a Norman Rockwell/Curt Swan hybrid.  This is a guy who’s going to be huge in the next few years.

Skottie Young is most famous for the brilliantly drawn The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  His style is that of sketchy cartooning that looks like no one else in the comics industry.  His designs are almost always wildly exaggerated like a caricature artist would, bringing a lot of personality and life to whatever he draws.  Currently, he’s selling his “daily doodles” on his website and they tend to go fast so if you’re interested in owning original artwork, you can’t go wrong with a Skottie Young original.

Michael Cho has done mostly one-off covers and interiors here and there for various anthologies but his occasional sketch is probably the most compelling aspect of his career.  His use of duotone (black, white, and one other color, usually red or blue) for color give his work a very striking appearance.  The ability to know what to draw and (what alludes many artists) what not to draw is a Cho specialty that allows the viewer to fill in the blanks, leaving something that engages and draws in.  His sketches are usually few and far between but they’re always a beauty to behold.

Phil Noto is mostly known for covers of DC books like Birds of Prey and Batgirl as well as the interiors for Marvel’s Avengers: The Origin.  His sketches usually reveal his skill at very realistic facial expressions and posturing, the use of subtlety and detail not many artists can pull off.  A lot of his simpler sketches are of of mostly female character sketches that maintain pose and sex appeal without resorting exploitation and “cheesecake” style proportions most of the time.  Some of his other sketches are full scene with an almost photographic quality of still life about them.  Either way, Noto is somewhere who is a master of design and personality on paper.

There are only a handful of the very skilled and talented comic professionals that treat their fans every day to something magical for free.  The internet has brought to your fingertips something that once could only be achieved by a trip to a convention.  I would suggest you spend some time looking these artists’ blogs and others (start at ComicTwart and just go from there) for a treasure trove of fantastic imagery.  You wouldn’t be disappointed.

Image Sources:

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The Comic is Dead, Long Live the Comic

by Kenny Cooper

A couple weeks back, in the final issue of DC’s big event Flashpoint, the Flash stood amidst the ruins of the world as his nemesis, the Reverse-Flash, gloated about how the destruction of the world was the Flash’s own doing.  It’s as unintentionally apt a metaphor for the state of comics right now as you’re likely to get.  I would be lying if I denied that the comics industry is seriously hurting and has been for a good long while.  In fact, many will tell you it’s on the brink of collapse as we know it.  Despite the influx of adaptions in the theater, on the TV screen, and inside the game console; comics as paper and ink are at all-time lows.  Twenty years ago, even a mid-level book could potentially make a million in sales.  Last May, no book hit the 100,000 mark, a historical low.  Right now, the comic industry is in a moment of truth: either do or die.  As someone who hopes to make pictures with words on them for a living, I’m hoping for “do.”

There are a lot of reasons for why comics are as low as they are right now.  The most glaring happened in the mid-90′s when business was as big as it’s ever been.  Through the inflated collector’s market, people bought multiple copies of the same issue, thinking that in the oncoming years the books would eventually sell for as much as Golden Age comics or Silver Age comics.  The big companies–DC, Marvel, and Image–all fed this by making ridiculous amounts of “special” issues: variant covers, foil covers, rebooted “#1!” issues, foldout issues, and the like.  With these mindset, the industry’s biggest sellers were often the books in the mold of the Rob Liefeld school and quality suffered.  When they realized, no, no wants to buy your foil cover copy of Cable #3, the speculators and their habit of buying three or four of the same book abandoned the comic shops and the House That X-Force built came crashing down.  Comic shops closed by the hundreds, distributors died, and the king of comics Marvel actually filed for bankruptcy. We’ve gotten back on our feet since but the decades-long assurance that Batman sells millions is dead.

That, however, is not the only reason.  Like the music industry, comics have been hit hard by the coming of the digital age.  If you ask anyone working in comics today what their biggest problem is in regards to making a living, they will tell you it’s digital piracy.  According to some sources, there are actually more people getting comics from bit torrenting sites than the comic shops.  Like the big music companies, the hesitance to embrace digitally released comics has been harmful for the industry.  Most digital comics are released as back issues, long after the floppies have been released, making the digital copies useless for anyone looking to keep up-to-date with their favorite books.  Meanwhile, pirates are scanning and releasing the books on digital format the same day the books are out.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to not consider the overall global economy when looking at this.  Given how hard it is financially for everyone right now, it’s not difficult to see why some are being forced to forgo their buying habits.  The fact that comics have become fairly expensive is also a factor.  Currently, comics are usually around the $2.99 or $3.99 for a single issue with 22 or so pages of story.  DC was recently “drawing the line at $2.99″ and forcing Marvel to keep some of their books at the same price but no one knows how long that will last.  The average six-issue graphic novel softcover goes between $12 and $20.  When you’re looking to read a 60-issue series like Y: The Last Man or Sandman, that can put a huge dent in your wallet.  Add to that the dissatisfaction over the constant “events” that crossover into several titles designated to make that OCD reader buy numerous tie-ins to get the “complete story.”  With unemployment on the rise, it’s simply easier to spend that little cash you have on groceries than it is to look at the latest installment of Fear Itself.

For the last few years, it seems like everyone has had their own idea about what to do about our dying comics industry.  In 2008, newly promoted Image Comics Partner and writer of Invincible and The Walking Dead Robert Kirkman made what’s been called the Kirkman Manifesto where he implored comic creators to abandon the Big Two en masse and start making creator-owned properties at Image and possibly other companies.  Kirkman cited himself as an example of how creator-owned work can make one a lot of money and stated that DC and Marvel should market strictly for kids while the indies cater to the adults.  Kirkman pepper his thoughts with a lot of worry over how long the comics market could last as it is now.  The declaration made a stink in the comic book world with people arguing for and against his points.  Ultimately though, very little came from it beyond a lot of debate and use of the phrase “rarefied air.”  Not long ago, Goon creator Eric Powell did a tongue-in-cheek swipe at superhero comics in the form of an over-the-top PSA.  Later on, he made a much more serious attack on the superhero market through video and Twitter, complaining that the comics market is completely over-saturated by superheroes and thus the cause of the downwards spiral.  Like with the Kirkman Manifesto, Powell’s comments ultimately didn’t change much.  The reality is that a creator that can make a good enough living on independent comics to survive (such as Kirkman or Powell) is very rare.   The other sad truth is that superheroes dominate the market because that’s pretty much all the mainstream consumer wants; even genre books from the Big Two (such as DC’s Jonah Hex or Marvel’s Criminal) struggle to make a profit in the current financial climate.

Perhaps one of the biggest comments from fans (and the biggest misconception, I think) is the notion that creators “just need to tell good stories and the readers will buy it.”  While nobody would love this to be true more than me, it just isn’t reality.  Honestly, this era right now has some of the greatest, most skillfully created comics ever, from both the indies and as well as the mainstream.  Yet, comics have never sold poorer.  Quality doesn’t always (or maybe even usually) translate into cash.  One of the most critically acclaimed books on the market today is Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera’s Scalped, a neo-noir crime comic set on a Native American reservation by DC’s Vertigo imprint.  Nobody that reads that book dislikes it.  Nevertheless, Jason Aaron’s work on Marvel superheroes, while good is nowhere near as heralded, sells like hot cakes while Scalped struggles to stay afloat financially.  Yes, there are some bad books out there, but that has little bearing, actually, on the state of comics.  Our most lucrative era, after all, also happened to be our most creatively bankrupt.  Honestly, looking at the revenue comparison between The Hurt Locker and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I can’t say quality can guarantee profit in any medium.

Recently, however, there has been the stirrings of change from within the offices of DC.  The first major comics company, DC brought us the Golden Age with Superman and brought forth the Silver Age with Barry Allen as the Flash.  They ushered a changing of the guard in 1986 with critically acclaimed game-changers Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.  Now, in 2011, they’re looking to usher in another age.  A few weeks ago, at the end of Flashpoint, DC said goodbye to their old canon and rebooted their entire line, canceling every book in the DC line (all the Vertigo books are unaffected) and relaunching 52 new books with a blank slate of continuity.  Comics are stirred by bold moves and this is the boldest.  New creative teams have risen, able to accept or reject previous history should they feel like it.  Perhaps most importantly, DC will be releasing day-and-date digital copies of all the new 52 books alongside their paper brothers.  Now, any who can’t regularly go to a comics store (a lot of folks, including me) will be able to buy almost all the DC catalog online.  It’s a major step towards the modernization of comics.  It’s inevitable that Marvel and any straggling publisher will have to follow suit.

The “New 52″ has made for a lot of excitement in the community, especially with books featuring less-than-household names like Swamp Thing and Animal Man.  Meanwhile, the company’s flagship, Superman is getting a massive retool.  Action Comics, the one that started this whole industry, has been rebooted with Grant Morrison at the helm as he and Rags Morales take Superman back to his roots.  Before Superman could push planets or make flight capable of reversing time in film, he was a flightless, only slightly bulletproof social crusader.  Morrison is bringing him back to this notion, a strong but not invincible flightless man in street clothes with a cape that beats up the wife beaters and intimidates the corrupt elite.  Meanwhile, Scott Snyder, who did a wonderful job telling a great Batman arc in Detective Comics that no one read, is being put on Batman proper to tell a new great story that people will actually read and buy.  So far, the New 52 looks to be leaving a great mark.  The relaunch’s first book, the new Justice League with superstar talents Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, sold out almost immediately, hitting over 300,000 in sales (keep in mind, May didn’t have a single book in the entire industry make a third of that.)

Over at Marvel, changes are happening to the once heralded but currently struggling Ultimate Universe with the controversial decision to kill off Peter Parker and create a new version of Ultimate Spider-Man with an Afro-Hispanic kid named Miles Morales.  Marvel is also attempting to achieve new reader-friendly graphic novels under the Season One imprint by telling modernized versions of their start heroes’ origins.  Still, Marvel is still hanging on to the events as their primary marketing strategy.  After Fear Itself, Marvel comes out with Shattered Heroes and The Fearless to follow.  Whether fans will jump on board remains to be seen.   However, with Disney now owning the company, Marvel’s focus has shifted to a concern towards their outside franchising.  The Avengers movie franchise is growing and growing now that Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger has brought millions into the Marvel fold.  While I can’t envision Marvel ever stopping their comics, the primary mode of revenue for them may be their movie properties (next year, they’re releasing The Avengers while Paramount releases The Amazing Spider-Man and Fox tries to bring out Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance).  Meanwhile, The Super Hero Squad continues to be a money maker on TV and in the toy aisles. Time will tell if Marvel feels the need to change as radically as DC.  That will probably depend of how successful the reboot is in the long run.

Nevertheless, we might be at the dawn of a new age in comic books.  Between DC’s radically shifting of the status quo and Marvel’s ever-growing juggernaut at the box office, 2011 might be the marker where the Modern Age of Comics ended and a new one began.  It remains to be seen whether the New 52 or the Marvel Cinematic Universe will draw readers back into the fold.  Still, new things are happening.  Creators are taking chances and companies are making huge moves.  Everyone from the mainstream to the indies is trying new things to attract new readers.  In the past, a downed industry has indicated a huge jump back to greatness.  Hopefully, that will be the case here and something will grab readers like Superman and Watchmen did in the past.  Looking at the figures for DC’s reboot so far, something might already have.  It’s a new day and I can hope it will have a tomorrow.

Oh, and go buy a comic.  We need the money.

Photo Sources:

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Anatomy of an Art Page of a Clown: The Best Joker Artists

by Kenny Cooper

If there’s a comic book character that’s fun to draw, it’s Batman. The horned ears, the cape, the symbol, and the basic design make for much to play around with and have a blast figuring out what would look cool. You can make it detailed or just a simple iconic outline and it all looks fantastic. If there’s a runner-up, it’s the Joker. However, unlike his Dark Knight counterpart, the Joker is a bit more taxing and requires more skill. Drawing a great Joker is almost an art form onto itself. Great artists may do beautiful art and STILL not make a very good Joker. Still, an artist that can make an iconic Joker is one that really deserves to be noticed. I’ve compiled a list of some of the best Joker artists (and maybe a handful of not-so-good ones) and will looking to see what makes them great.

Lee Bermejo (Joker)

While Barmejo’s Joker may seem to borrow a lot from Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight but reportedly the coincidence is simply that.  Regardless of the reasons, Barmejo’s interpretation is certain the most unique among the selections.  The Joker here is the most realistic of the designs while still maintaining a dangerous edge to him.  Rather than the flashy purple suit, the Joker here settles for a black leather jack and street clothes while the only thing to let you know he’s the Joker is the pale skin, green hair, and (most importantly) a crudely made Glasgow smile.  The teeth are perhaps the nastiest of all Joker designs, adding the kind of detachment from normal society that makes him so scary.  This is the Joker most likely to stumble into a 7-11 at 11pm smelling like petrol and urine and pop your eyeball out.

Brian Bolland (The Killing Joke)

Of all the artists that have drawn the Joker, Bolland’s is perhaps the most iconic.  Bolland in general has a kind of grotesque detail to his style that really makes his Joker really pop.  There aren’t many big choices that Bolland made in terms of tweaking the design but there are really effective subtle ones.  For one, the eyebrows are much sharper and angular than previously, giving his eyes an almost demonic flair.  He’s also lankier with a pointier chin, giving him a lot of uncomfortably sharp angles, like he could just drive his face into your head and kill you that way.  The hair is also a bit of note.  Before Bolland, artists almost uniformly drew his hair combed back.  For , The Killing Joke, Bolland decided to draw it more foward and spiky, giving it a messier and more unkempt look.  Since then, a great deal of artists have co-opted this look for the Joker.  Since the late 80′s, Brian Bolland has been the benchmark of the Joker’s look.  I couldn’t leave Bolland off this list.  It’d be criminal.

Alex Maleev (No Man’s Land)

Alex Maleev, an artist most noted as the hand behind Brian Bendis’s Daredevil run, got his start in mainstream comics with the Batman family of books during the No Man’s Land storyline.  Of the artists here, Maleev is the one that drew the Joker the least (mostly covers and a single-page story) and yet he deserves a mention.  Maleev takes a lot from Bolland’s Joker– the frozen grin, the spiky pompadour, the chin– and adds a level of grit.  His work has been described as looking like an old photograph from the 20′s.  There’s a kind of photorealism to Maleev’s Joker; much like Bolland’s and yet somewhat less exaggerated and somewhat more three dimensional.  Maleev also ultilizes shading and shadows more often, giving a dark menace to his interpretation of the Joker.  All in all, it’s a very scary looking Joker.

Dave McKean (Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth)

Unlike the most artists here, McKean deals with paints, opting to look more impressionist in the classical sense.  His figures in Arkham Asylum feel more like ideas given form than characters themselves.  The Joker ends up looking more like a nightmare being than human.  McKean’s paints give the Joker texture but the features are very exaggerated as well.  His hair is like a green torch upon his head while his eyes are huge and constantly wide open with the usual giant grin.  He himself looks like he just took a shotgun to the face and survived… kind of… and it’s scary. The design lends itself well to the dreamlike style of the book and makes for one of the most frightening looking Joker ever.

Marshall Rogers (The Laughing Fish)

Marshall Rogers was for a long time the iconic Joker artist.  During the late sixties and early seventies, the Batman TV series had drained the franchise of any weight or gravitas by turning everything Batman into a backhanded joke.  The Joker was not immune.  While he had been something of a harmless trickster since the 40′s, the creators of Batman decided it was time to be serious again and created “The Laughing Fish.”  Rogers’ design was one of the first attempts to pull Joker out of the cartoony Dick Sprang/Jerry Robinson design and make something that looks a little more real.  The result is a more detailed, more off-putting Joker who looks more malicious in his amusement than before.  This was the first time artists really started to play around the Joker’s eyebrows, making look like he could kill you at any moment.  This is also where the Joker developed the blue -ish striped pants Jack Nicholson wore for the 1989 film.  In fact, visually, Nicholson’s Joker is very much Rogers’ version.

Alex Ross (Case Study, Justice)

The Joker is a subject Alex Ross likes to draw but almost always relegates him to bit roles or covers/posters.  Due to the natural feel of Ross’ photorealistic style, his Joker tie with Barmejo’s for looking the most realistic (though for different reasons).  The painted style Ross is famous for allows a meatier, more detailed, more three dimensional Joker.  This is the original Bob Kane Joker– the slicked, back hair, the posture– crawling into the real world.  Every wrinkle from every muscle pulled when Joker smiled is right there on the page.  There isn’t a spot on his face that isn’t tensed up.  It’s a pale, crazed vampire looking to make you laugh to death.

Bruce Timm (Batman Adventures)

Naturally, you’ll recognize this Joker as being from Batman: the Animated Series.  For a lot of kids of my generation, this was how they saw the Joker.  I won’t be talking about the cartoon version but more the version that Timm created for the Batman Adventures tie-in comic that was released in conjunction with the series.  For the comic, Timm’s influences by both Jack Kirby (in terms of shade and ink) and Harvey Kurtzman (in terms of curved design) really poke through more.  Being a comic and not chained to the absolute need to be on-model all the time, this Joker is more given to exaggerations.  For an example, if you own a copy of Mad Love, observe when Joker has his “YOU GOT WHO TIED UP WHERE?!” and compare it to when it happens in the animated series; the comic Joker had more lines wrinkles and lines that really helps put across the intensity of his mood.  Also, Timm’s Joker in the comic has the ability to exaggerate features such as his grin whenever it suits the scene.  Timm’s Joker is, of the ones on this list, the most expressive in his moods.

And, of course, the not-so-good ones…

Jim Lee (Hush)

Jim Lee has a very polished style that has helped define the way mainstream superhero book have looked since the late 80′s and early 90′s.  In the early 2002′s, Jim Lee set the comic book world ablaze with his work on the arc Hush.  That being said, his Joker is not very good.  Aside from the Wolverine hair in this shot, the jawline is too shrunken in and the nose is a bit comically long.  It makes him less demonic looking and more like that of an imp or an elf.  As such, it’s not as threatening as many of the others above are.  The desire to give the Joker sharp features is understandable but this is an example of when it doesn’t work.

Tim Sale (The Long Halloween, Dark Victory)

The big problem with this Joker is kind of obvious.  It’s the teeth.  In all fairness, this is the moment where the teeth are their biggest.  Nevertheless, even when they aren’t comically huge, they’re tall and thin in such a way that it’s only because they’re in his mouth that you know they’re his teeth.  Like giving the Joker sharp features, a big smile makes sense and yet this is done in such a way that the Joker doesn’t look scary but silly.  Also, he’s Conan O’Brien.  Once you see, you can’t unsee it.  Sorry.

Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns)

Unlike the last two where familiar elements of the Joker are utilized in ways that don’t work, Frank Miller opted to reject all that.  Where the Joker is usually lanky and stringy, Miller makes him thick and burly.  He also forgoes the combed-back look as well as the messy upwards design that Bolland created.  He prefers a more vaguely feathery style.  The face is squared out as opposed to the sharper features most other Jokers.  The problem is that it just doesn’t look like the Joker but a thug in Joker make-up.  He has none of the demonic flair that the others wield.  The Joker is more than just clown facepaint and dyed hair; he should be recognizable even in black and white.  Remove the color in Miller’s Joker and you’d probably think this was some run-of-the-mill mafioso.   Only at the end of this issue does he even begin to look like the Joker for a couple panels and by then, he’s… well… go read the book.

The Joker is a tricky one to draw.  Even great icons of the business can mess him up.  There needs to be a balance of exaggeration and structure to emphasize the fearsome impishness of the character.  When it’s done poorly, it can be bland or even comical (in a bad way).  Done right though, and you’ve created a masterpiece.

Sources:

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BEST IN GENRE (Rom-Com): The Love Lives of The Brief and Drawn

by Kenny Cooper

Like a lot of genres, the romantic comedy is one where the temptation of filmmakers to just make the same formulaic premise runs high.  If you ask what the big criticism is concerning most romantic comedies, it’s that they’re all the same.  Two people who have nothing in common will meet and will fall in love for reasons nobody can really explain.  There will be misunderstandings and wacky best friends and, at some point, Matthew McConaughey will be shirtless.  As such, it is sometimes appreciated when filmmakers shake it up just a tad by throwing in a little weird.  Maybe they’ll add zombies.  Maybe one of the lovers is an elderly woman.  Maybe one of them is an ogre.  If you looking for weird and unique romances against a comedic backdrop, though, your best stop is at the Golden Age of Animation.

You will not find more crazed, unhealthy, strange love affairs than you will in the animated shorts of the 40′s and 50′s.  Harold and Maude can’t hold a candle to Bugs and Elmer Fudd in terms of warped alternative love lives.  A sentient rabbit New Yorker playing homoerotic sadomasochistic mind games with his simpleton human counterpart who apparently likes his women buck-toothed and furry?  It’s sick!  SICK!  It’s also ridiculously funny.  So are these other shorts of warped and twisted love.

The Henpecked Duck (Warner Bros, 1941)

Directed by maverick animator and potential mental patient Bob Clampett, this short features Daffy in the midst of his own divorce (do not watch this cartoon if you don’t want a wailing “I WANT A DIVORCE!  I WANT A DIVOOOORCE!!!” stuck in your head for days).  Since this is before you could divorce someone for no real reason, Judge Porky demands to know what the dealio, yo.  Daffy’s enraged wife tells the story amidst abuse heaped on Daffy of how she threatened talked Daffy into sitting on their egg while she visited her mother.  Daffy proceeds to screw around with the egg and perform a faux-disappear/reappear trick which turns out to be not so faux after all.  The only problem is Daffy can’t get the “reappear” part to work on the second try.  A panic barrage of “ALAKAZAAM!” and an anal violation with a doorknob later (Honest!) and Mrs. Duck wants a divorce.  This actually might be the most despicable thing pre-Hunter’s Trilogy Daffy ever did; cause the unexplainable disappearance of his unborn child.  We never see Daffy’s wife ever again after this.  Maybe he tried the trick on their second kid and she just left with the kids, causing Daffy a mental breakdown that evolved in the greedy, selfish, self-destructive duck you see later arguing what season of hunting it is.  He doesn’t really want Bugs to get shot.  He just wants his family back.

Ding Dog Daddy (Warner Bros, 1942)

Friz Freleng has the reputation of being the least unhinged director of the Looney Tunes’ primary staff which is a tad fair and also a tad unfair.  The latter is proven by this short which, when you get right down it, is probably the most balls-to-the-wall insane romance I’ve seen short of Clayface’s love for a mannequin in an Alan Moore-penned Batman story.  In this short, Pinto Colvig ( the voice of the original Goofy) voices a dog who is looking for love in all the wrong places.   Specifically, he falls in love with a metal statue of a dog that happens to work as a lightning rod every time he kisses it/her.  Eventually, the statue is taken a scrap iron plant where it’s melted down into a giant bullet but that doesn’t deter our hero.  Yes, this cartoon ends with a dog making out with a giant bullet.  I almost think you could make an entire feature film on this premise just based on how completely twisted it is.

Red Hot Riding Hood (MGM, 1943)

This cartoon is, by far, the most famous on this list thanks in part to The Mask and is considered one of the greatest of all time.  It’s really more a sex comedy than a romantic comedy, but it’s also so influenced by screwball comedy and such a classic, it should be mentioned.  One of Tex Avery’s first cartoons after jumping to MGM, this is the re-imagining of the classic traditional Little Red Riding Hood (“Every studio in Hollywood has done it this way!”) into a 40′s nightclub setting.  The Wolf is an oversexed horndog looking to make it with Red, now a curvy, 20-something lounge singer.  Half the cartoon is the Wolf making an absolute idiot of himself while leering at the serenading Red. The other half is the tables turning as the Wolf evades the advances of an even more oversexed Grandma.  The original ending (forever lost, it seems) featured the Wolf and Grandma having screwed-up wolf/people kids but was cut because the implications were just too weird.  You know you’ve outdone yourself in the bizarrely unacceptable when the “tame” ending is the main character blowing his brains out.

Blue Cat Blues (MGM, 1956)

Tom & Jerry had a lot of “romantic” themed shorts.  Usually, it followed the same formula: Tom tries to impress a female cat, Jerry cockblocks him, and hilarity ensues.  This one is a tad different.  The cartoon opens as Tom waits on the train tracks for a train to kill him while Jerry narrates (yes, Jerry talks in this one but, unlike the “Movie”, it is awesome in no small part to the performance of Paul Frees) how Tom met a girl and fell in love.  However, in short order, she ends up with Butch (the black and grey cat that shows up from time to time) who is rich in a Hollywood director sort of way and sweeps her away.  Tom goes positively broke trying to keep up but just can’t come close, leaving him a drinking, suicidal mess.  As you might tell, this is a really depressing short but one that is really interesting in how it departs from the traditional formula of the series.  Tom and Jerry aren’t even enemies here; Jerry keeps trying to keep Tom above water to no avail and even refers to them as the “best of friends”.  Plus, for whatever reason, “Parfum” always makes me laugh.

Really Scent (Warner Bros, 1959)

A lot of the Pepe Le Pew cartoons are essentially the same story: some animal, usually a black and white cat, gets paint on their back and suddenly everyone thinks it’s a skunk.  Then, along comes smelly horndog and general sexual assailant Pepe Le Pew to haphazardly hit on/chase poor animal.  This one is actually vaguely different.  Directed by Abe Levitow (this is the only time a Pepe cartoon isn’t by Chuck Jones), the story goes that a cat is born with a skunk streak which means all the guy cats will treat like she has a mustache come her teenage years.  The weird part is Fabriette (the cat) actually wants to be with Pepe but just can’t get over the smell.  She resolves that she must embrace the smell and goes about odorizing herself.  Meanwhile, Pepe finally realizes why everyone runs in fear of him and decides to de-odorize himself.  You can see where this is going.  The story here is oddly involved for a Pepe Le Pew cartoon and is oddly touching in a way even if it does involve some really bizarre implications about relationships and inter-species coupling.

The Dot and The Line (MGM, 1965)

This was an Oscar winner and Chuck Jones at his most abstract and artsy.  Inspired by Flatland, this is an adaptation of a book by Norton Juster about a line who falls in love with a dot.  She’s with a wild, chaotic squiggle and sees nothing of worth in the straightforwardly dull line.  All the line’s friends insist he should settle with another line but he’s determined to get the dot.  Realizing he’s too boring and stiff for her, he learns the tricks of the Kama Sutra figures out how to bend and curve himself and, before long, is making complex shapes and designs that I’m pretty sure you can’t actually get out of one continuous line but just go with it.  By the end, his flexible ways win out over the squiggle’s unkempt nature and he lives reasonably happy ever after.  Let this be a lesson: you want a girl, go learn yoga.

In terms of the romantic comedy, you may not find any funnier than the works of animators from the Golden Age.  In terms of unique and strange premises for laughs at love’s expense, you can’t beat these rubbery, immortal figures that can do anything and not only survive but sneak past the censors the kind of material no live action comedy could ever, ever get away with.  And we like it that way.  Nobody wants to see a hot redhead kiss a poodle in real life.  That’s just weird.

Here, it’s just funny.

Image Sources:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/Whats_Opera_Doc_still.png

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/07/0807/0802art/red.jpg

Video Source:

http://www.youtube.com/

BEST IN GENRE (Action): Would You Like a Little Story with Your Explosion Porn?

By Kenny Cooper

A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie, there is nothing like that experience

–Michael Mann

If Clint Eastwood and/or Eli Wallach were here right now, they might mention that there “two kinds of people in the world.” It always seems to be mostly true. There are those who like Coca-Cola and those who like Pepsi. A cartoon fan tends to swing either to Looney Tunes or Disney. There are blue states and red states. The screaming teenyboppers in my group usually preferred either N’Sync or the Backstreet Boys. Sure, there’s Dr. Pepper and Ross Perot but we’re creatures that seem to lead towards “either/or”. In the realm of the “movie fan”, this may be true as well. In one corner you have the hardcore film fan. They’ve studied the medium down to what a “C47″ is, can actually give a detailed lecture on what German Expressionism is, and will give you a layered explanation as to why the new Darren Aronofsky film was an awesome exploration into the depravity of man and why the latest venture by Zack Snyder was “crap in a hat”. On the other side, you have the casual movie fan. They work nine to five, have other interests, and just don’t have time to sit there and examine all there is about a Tarkovsky movi,e but just wanted to watch an Edgar Wright movie and laugh the stresses of life off. The two may clash over whether There Will Be Blood was genius or boring, whether Iron Man was awesome or tedious, and generally just not like the same stuff. It’s not as though the hardcore fan is adverse to fun or that the casual fan doesn’t want to think, it’s just that rarely a film will give you something for everybody. It’d be great to have both those great tastes be great together.

Enter the good action movie. Action movies are a funny genre. They have the stigma of just being “explosion porn”; lots of shooting, lots of explosions and not a lot of anything else.  It’s often what the hardcore “cinephile” (actually a word, it turns out!) wants to loathe, but it’s exactly what the casual fan flocks to like a fat kid to cake. However, when a good director or a good writer (preferably both) get a hold of one, magic can happen. The impossible can happen.  The hardcore filmmaker crosses the aisle to the genre of one-liners and infinite bullets and together, they get a cinematic bill passed.  Only Nixon could go to China and only Nolan could go to Gotham City. The casual fan can be left breathless by the battle between moral altruism and chaotic nihilism while the hardcore fan can stand in awe of a really cool truck stunt. A casual fan may find himself opened up to the philosophical underpinnings of a rich story while a hardcore fan is reminded of all the fun and wonder that drew them to the medium.  Explosions don’t have to be pointless.  Existential journeys need not be tedious.  As a wise man once said before obliterating a countryside with super-missiles, is it too much to ask for both?  No.  No, it is not.

The concept of the action movie is almost as old as the movie itself, possibly because action is one of the most malleable genres in the field.  Its umbrella includes war films, crime films, western films, martial arts film, fantasy films, and even comedies.  The notion of action on film can be traced all the way back to The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the classic western made by the Edison Manufacturing Company.  The iconic moment of the film– the ending shot of the gang’s leader firing directly into the camera– is one of the most referenced scenes in film ever and the action movie in distilled form.  The action genre continued on from Douglas Fairbanks to Errol Flynn to Lee Marvin to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Christian Bale.  Audiences’ tastes has always been shifting and moving yet a craving for the exciting, exaggerated, and explosive has always been in style.

Action is perhaps the magic of cinema at its simplest: a world more interesting than your own. It’s a world where your taxes, your lawn, and your kid’s braces don’t really matter.  Instead, you can imagine your world is no more complicated than punching that German terrorist/heist man in the face to save your estranged wife.  An action film can, and often do, place on layers of ambiguity, thought, and emotion that makes the experience even sweeter while still holding that core of amusement that lets you forget the bills, the annoying coworkers, and the rising gas prices to just live another couple of hours where men in fedoras with whips punch Nazis off of tanks and look good doing it.  Action films are fun.  In some circles, that can be a dirty word: “fun.”  How dare you enjoy yourself at the theater?!  Are there bad action films?  Of course there are.  Those that consciously disregard innocent lives as cannon fodder for cool shots (Transformers comes to mind) or grossly objectify people into ugly caricatures  (again… Transformers) or don’t even bother to weave a story for a world to inhabit for the audience (you know it by now) are bad and should be seen as bad.  Nevertheless, those bad movies merely sweeten the deal when a genuinely good one comes down the pike.   When that action movie gets it right, seamlessly merging reality with fantasy, seriousness with lightheartedness, the dramatic with the combustible; magic happens.  A few dozen strangers sit amongst each other, unable to see each other and hopefully unable to hear each other.  A giant white wall comes life.  Suddenly, it isn’t a wall.  It’s another universe.  You aren’t just in some dark room with sticky floors and overpriced popcorn.  You’re in another dimension as an omniscient watcher of people as they live their lives.  You gasp with their misfortunes.  You chuckle at their pithy one-liners.  You sit in awe of their fight.  You sympathize with their failures.  You cheer at their victories.  You and a bunch of other people you never met before all become a creature of one, feeling a communal sense of wonder at the world before your eyes.  It doesn’t matter what struggles or annoyances or tragedies you all had before the trailers rolled.  You had an experience.  You had an escape.  You had fun.  It felt good, right?

These movies did for me.  Maybe they’ll do it for you.  It’s in chronological order as before.

1) The Mark of Zorro (1920)

Starring the original action/adventure star Douglas Fairbanks, this film is obviously the adaptation of Johnston Pulley’s 1919 pulp novel, The Curse of Capistrano. Everybody knows the story: a crusader for social justice in Spanish-occupied California uses the cover of an aristocratic dandy to strike out against the corrupt political infrastructure that oppresses the lower classes.  Always uber-confident and always uber-competent, Fairbanks was the quintessential swashbuckling hero that paved the way for the superhero action star (superhero both literally and figuratively).  Of course, without this movie, we wouldn’t have Batman (who was influenced both in real life and in canon by Zorro) and I actually live in a suburb of the city where the real-life inspiration of Zorro died so this movie already has a lot going for me on top of the absolute fun it is to watch.

2) The Seven Samurai (1954)

Akira Kurosawa might have been the greatest director that ever lived. Likewise, Toshiro Mifune might have been the greatest actor that ever lived. Add Kurosawa’s usual band of actors, give them a budget, and you have one of the greatest action films ever made. A village besieged by bandits finds an old ronin to gather up a collection of warriors to defend them. This movie, perhaps more than any other, blends exciting action, great characters, amusing comedy, and wrenching drama in such a way that you would find it very hard to find people that couldn’t find something to like about it. This movie is a perfect example of auteurs who work well and work well together to make something magical. This movie is not only one of the best action movies ever made but one of the greatest movies period.

3) Dr. No (1962)

Though I think From Russia With Love is the better film of this series, this one is certainly the one that encapsulates the action movie franchise that is the Bond films. Sean Connery makes his first entry as 007 when he travels to Jamaica to investigate the murder of a colleague (spoiler: it’s Dr. No… who knew?!) and stumbles upon a plot involving radiation and general shadiness. It’s hard to describe just how influential this movie was but I would like to remind everybody this movie had 21 sequels and is still going. Outside of Godzilla, nobody has come close to pulling that off. The influence this movie had on everything from TV’s Jonny Quest to comics’ Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is huge even to this day. Plus, this movie boasts one of the greatest and most instantly known theme songs EVER. You’re humming it in your head right now, aren’t you? Yeah, you are.

4) Point Blank (1967)

If I didn’t have a Lee Marvin movie on a best action films list, my head might explode from sheer wrongness. This movie is an adaptation of Donald Westlaske’s The Hunter (I’ve done a review of the 2009 comic adaptation, go read it) starring Marvin as the toughest, most hard boiled man ever in existence. Go listen to James Brown’s “The Payback” and you’ll get the gist of the plot for this movie. This movie is possibly the most stylish and unique revenge film I’ve ever seen with long silences, film noir shadings, and French New Wave themes. The movie is a fractured timeline with harsh realities and almost dreamlike in feel. Also, Marvin gives probably the most awesomely brutal kick to a guy I’ve ever seen in a movie.

5) Enter the Dragon (1973)

Another candidate for Most Awesomely Brutal Kick to a Guy might be the iconic crescent kick Bruce Lee gives to the villain in this one. Bruce Lee is synonymous with the martial arts film sub-genre of the action movie genre. Every time you mimicked a martial arts move, you’ve gone “waaah!” most likely. You learned that from Bruce. Martial arts films pre-Bruce were goofy affairs with lame technique and an over-reliance on wires. Bruce Lee brought realism and actually good technique to the form and Enter the Dragon remains a perfect and rightfully iconic example of martial arts on film as Lee’s character enters a tournament run by a drug lord and shows why he’s the man. Buddhist philosophy, 70′s culture, and roundhouse kicks come colliding beautifully together in this one.

6) Die Hard (1988)

This movie is probably the perfect example of a film that isn’t trying to be anything other than fun and does it masterfully. Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman trade barbs and bullets while the dad from Family Matters, the principal from The Breakfast Club and the jerk from Ghostbusters look on. Not only is this the most manly Christmas movie ever but it manages to balance suspension of disbelief with surprisingly realistic touches (as it turns out, glass DOES hurt). Sadly most of the “Die Hard on a something” rip-offs don’t have nearly as much charming characterization, black humor, or humanity as the movie that kick-started their existence. Nevertheless, this is a movie that knows exactly what it wants and pulls it off better than most any other like it.

7) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Whenever a franchise hits the high mark with the sequel, the third movie is almost always assured. Whenever this happened, almost everybody will ask “Has there ever been a third movie that was better than the previous ones?” Ladies and germs, I give you Last Crusade. Harrison Ford returns as the iconic Indiana Jones and teams with Sean Connery (who plays Indy’s father in a very un-James Bond-like fashion… save for “She talks in her sleep”) to battle Nazis for the Holy Grail. Denholm Elliot and John Rhys Davies return as Marcus Brody and Sallah as the gang hops through location to location in a race between good and evil. Everything that everybody loves about Indiana Jones is in this amped up to eleven– chases, fisticuffs, spiritual awakenings, Nazis getting their comeuppance– and it serves as a fitting conclusion to the Indiana Jones trilogy since we all know they never made another Indiana Jones movie after this. Don’t give me this nonsense about nukes and refrigerators. Never happened.

8) Léon (or The Professional) (1994)

As it turns out, the French can do more than just fancy-pants arthouse films; they can do cool action flicks as well.  Jean Reno stars as a frighteningly capable hitman who doubles as a frighteningly innocent big kid who can shoot all your henchmen with the highest of ease and then go to the theater and sit in awe as Fred Astaire tap-dances onscreen.  Soon, a corrupt cop played by Gary Oldman guns down the drug-dealing family in the next apartment, leaving only a scared and traumatized little girl played by a young Natalie Portman. He takes her under his wing and shows her the art of assassination and plant care.  This is another movie where the action is bloody without being exploitative and the characters are human enough to root for, making for a great movie for both lovers of story and lovers of gunfire.

9) Heat (1995)

Back in the mid-90′s, if you wanted a richly-written action flick to please both the critics and the masses, you added young Natalie Portman.  Michael Mann, speaker of that quote on top, must have known this as he cast her for the daughter of Al Pacino, an obsessively excellent cop (who’s probably on cocaine) as he tracks Robert De Niro’s heist man character in the City of Angels.  Both cop and criminal cope with the fact that they live in a world separate from the millions around them and relate to each other even as they try putting bullets in each other’s faces. Mann’s obsessive need for realistic action (if you’ve worked with Michael Mann, you know how to fire a real M-16 because he makes you) really shines through in one of the greatest shootouts ever put on film.  Themes of loneliness, betrayal, and automatic weapons make this movie a must-see.

10) The Dark Knight (2008)

If I had a nickel for every time I heard somebody say “That was the best movie I’ve seen in a good long while,” I still wouldn’t have anywhere near as much money as this movie made. This movie is the reason I’m writing for this genre in the Best in Genre series. This movie is a perfect example of the kind of shared experience I was waxing on about in the paragraphs above. This movie is why movies are made. This movie is our generation’s Star Wars. Hardcore cinephiles and casual movie fans came together in 2008 and let it be known with their words and their wallets, “This is freakin’ awesome.” You all know why this movie is good. I don’t even have to say it.

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Sources:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/michael_mann.html#ixzz1FlFzcEjI

http://moviesmedia.ign.com/movies/image/article/109/1093034/the-dark-knight-20100526115439937.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Great_Train_Robbery_0018.jpg

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/81/1075354758.jpg

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/riel505/blog%2520pix/the7samurai.jpg

http://mimg.ugo.com/201103/4/9/1/177194/cuts/dr-no-bond-kills-a-spider-786-poster_528_poster.jpg

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2005/01/28/marvin372.jpg

http://ninelongnights.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/enter_the_dragon_1973_685x385.jpg

http://cinemasights.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/diehard-smoking.jpg

http://www.filmcritic.com/assets_c/2010/02/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Last-Crusade-thumb-560xauto-24426.gif

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Djd16Qyr8iI/TVqf6q0-RrI/AAAAAAAAHrU/GGLdNBYjCoo/s1600/1464131he4.jpg

http://antwanreynolds.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/heat-shootout-1995.jpg

http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20080626/425.dark.knight.062608.jpg

An Ode to the Anvil

By Kenny Cooper

Once when I was a wee lad of eight sitting in the living room on a Saturday morning with cold feet and eating colder pizza, Luke Skywalker was so kind as to let me know of an old show business proverb via baggy suit-wearing clown moments before being pantsed, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Since becoming a writer and attempting a weak-handed stab or two at comedy, I can confirm this is true. Comedy is a bit like an ocean, always shifting about and always ready to float you right into a Great White. So, to find something that maintains the funny, not only for all ages, but for decades after the fact, you have something special. Almost everyone who’s going to read this had their affection for the absurd refined by the cartoons of our youth. As kids many of us saw cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation or saw cartoons inspired by them. Many comedians of today in TV, film, stage, and comics take inspiration from the exploits of rubber-bodied talking animals who wrecked hilarious violence upon each other before anyone had a problem with that. For all this, you can thank Fred “Tex” Avery.

Less panicked screaming, more thanking, please.

Tex Avery came to the studios of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies in 1935 back when it was more or less just another animation trying to ride the coattails of Disney with cutesy characters and saccharine songs. Avery was the director to truly try to break away from that. Tex saw cartoons for what they were: a universe you could build from the ground up where literally anything was possible. He injected his cartoons with the kind of surrealist humor we all associate as “cartoon gags” these days– crazy characters, falling objects, talking to the audience, etc. Along the way, he managed to create a few characters– Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd. His style not only helped pushed the Warner Bros. cartoons out of being another Disney clone, but managed to become so successful that everybody started to move out of the Disney and emulate him. Three of his animators– Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson and Bob Clampett– went on to become huge figures in the cartoon world in their own right. Multiple Oscar-winners Will Hanna and Joe Barbara mentioned specifically how Tex’s style helped them speed up the pace and expand the gags in the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Later on, Avery moved on to MGM where his style became even wackier and more insane. His influence on cartoons and humor in general is massive and I’d like to take a bit to look at a handful of his cartoons.

Porky’s Duck Hunt (Warner Bros, 1937)

I’m almost certain Tex Avery invented the cartoon genre of a hunter being pestered by his prey. If not, he at least codified it. In this cartoon, Porky and his dog are besieged by a flock of black ducks led by a crazed Daffy in his debut cartoon. Right from the start, Tex’s magic shines though. The timing for the gag at 1:08 is perfect; quick and immediate like a punch in the nose. By the time we realized it’s happened it’s over and we’re laughing in shock. Audacity was Tex’s M.O.: after years of cute little music numbers by Mickey Mouse clones, imagine the reaction to a gag where a cross-eyed hunter with a crooked shotgun shoots at a duck and downs two planes instead (2:12). Imagine the audacity of fish getting smashed on moonshine and commandeering a rowboat to drunkenly belt out “Moonlight Bay”. Tex’s cartoons were a world where anything could happen, whether it was cartoons acknowledging they were cartoons (5:12) or Joe Penner apparently waiting underwater for the opportunity to spout his catch phrase after Porky shoots up his own boat. This cartoon is a great example of the type of absurdity Tex Avery infected the cartoon industry with.

Detouring America (Warner Bros, 1939)

A favorite formula for Tex was the “travelogue” cartoon where a narrator would go from place showing absurdities appropriate to the theme of the cartoon, usually in visual puns. “Detouring America” was the first as we go across America watching Tex turn various areas into an excuse to do something hilarious such as the “Cattle Puncher” at 2:30 (“Ah, so YOU’RE wondering, too!”). Unfortunately, this cartoon also showcase some of the acceptable-at-the-time racial caricatures immediately following that joke, though Tex manages to still make it funny when the Eskimo just picks the hitchhiker up. The plotless narrative cartoon would later be perfected when Tex moved to MGM and started doing the “…of Tommorrow” series.

Who Killed Who? (MGM, 1943)

[Youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6LpSkc23uk]

This cartoon might be the quintessential Tex Avery cartoon.  The basic story is a parody of the murder mystery stories that were popular in the day as a man (or dog in this case) has been murdered and a local detective must investigate with hilarious results.  Tex’s cartoons are always filled to the brim with gags but this one in particular seems cram them in like a clown car.  Everything to love about Tex is here: fourth wall gags, crazy double takes, rubber psychics, ridiculous sight gags, bawdy humor and more 40′s pop culture references than you’d know what to do with.  The entire sequence of the victim’s “death” and subsequent examination starting at 2:10 is possibly some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a cartoon.  This is Tex at some of his wackiest, fastest, and best.  Due to its lack of being a part of a series like Droopy or Tom & Jerry, this cartoon sadly doesn’t get the attention it deserves, but you’ve presumably seen it now so it’s all good.

Symphony in Slang (MGM, 1951)

By the 50′s, Tex had altered his style quite a bit.  While his earlier work was more round and rubbery, his later style became more minimalist and sharpened.  While his timing is as quick as ever, the animation became much more limited.  Many of the gags have very little if any movement in them.  The premise is simple: a 50′s man attempts to enter Heaven but St. Peter can’t seem to understand a word he says.  They both go to Noah Webster (who appears to have never understood the concept of slang, metaphors, or basic jargon).  Thus, the cartoon depicts Webster’s fumbling attempts to get what this guy is saying, making a literal interpretation of everything. The hilarity really shines through whenever Webster makes the most basic sayings– “beside myself with anger” at 2:01, “I was up against it” at 3:38, and “I carried on” at 5:29.  While Chuck Jones tends to corner the market on “clever” cartoons, this one shows his mentor Tex also knew how to experiment and come up with something really unique.

SH-H-H-H-H-H (Walter Lantz Productions, 1955)

This is Tex’s last theatrical short, done with Walter Lantz’s studio who had produced Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy.  A bongo player in a jazz band has suffered a nervous breakdown and is advised by his doctor to take a quiet vacation lest he blow up.  The man travels to a Swiss hotel famed for its quietness but finds himself next to an obnoxious couple next door who won’t stop laughing and playing the trombone.  The man becomes more and more desperate to shut the couple up and hilarity ensues.  Despite having a noticeably lesser budget than his work at MGM and Warner, Tex makes it work with some oddly fluid animation (especially the doctor at 1:10) and some very clever gags (the way the hotel enforces its “no noise” policy starting at 1:54 is pretty hilarious).  This cartoon does borrow a bit from 1949′s Doggone Tired and 1953′s The Three Little Pups but Tex mixes in enough new stuff to make it well worth watching and proving that he was a master of comedy even at the end of his career.

Much of what made the Golden Age of Animation is owed to Tex Avery.  Without his oddball sensibilities and unique vision, we might have never seen the genius of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and all those inspired by him and them take flight and give us the gems we treasure today.  Without Tex, we would have no Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, or Droopy. You owe the laughs of your childhood to Tex Avery and you better be thankful.

Yeah, that’s much better than the thing you were doing before.

Photo Sources:

http://www.texavery.com/shots/wolf13.jpg

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Wolf-300.jpg

Pax Romana: Somebody Turned The DeLorean Into A Popemobile.

by Kenny Cooper

In light of our sci-fi edition to the Best in Genre series, I’d like to highlight one of the best science-fiction stories to come of comics for a while: 2007′s (and 2008′s) Pax Romana by Jonathan Hickman from Image Comics. Hickman currently writes Marvel Comics’ longest running superhero series, The Fantastic Four because of Pax Romana. Looking at the back cover, I can spy Warren Ellis, Robert Kirkman, and Matt Fraction giving it rave reviews. Those are names you can trust to tell you a comic is good. As a matter of fact, I’m a voice you can trust and I say this book is good. So there.

Pax Romana is often described as something hard to describe, somewhat because of the complexities of the story and also, I think, because a lot of illumination about it tends to edge into spoiler territory.  For my part, I’m going to do my best to explain to you the premise without ruining it for you.  The time of the framed narrative is uncertain, at least at first but we see the fruits of the story’s actions: The Holy Roman Empire still stands atop a cyberpunk technological landscape as Emperor Constans IV assumes the throne at age four.  A product of genetic engineering like all in the imperial bloodline, Constans is already capable of higher level thinking, mentioning the danger of allowing completely artificial lifeforms a say in the affairs of ruling and yet is still childlike enough to inquire about said lifeform’s “funny hat.”  The owner of said funny hat is the Gene Pope, an artificially created man from the DNA of 1026 holy men and women and is a Series-7 in its class.  The Gene Pope is the figurehead of the Unified Church and is the primary caretaker of all the secret knowledge of how the empire has stayed in power.  For the Gene Pope, it is now his duty to enlighten the new Emperor with the secret knowledge.  For Constans, it is storytime.

It is 2053 and the prestige of the Vatican is crumbling all around them.  The secularization of Europe that we see today has continued unimpeded, leaving the Catholic Church at the brink of obsolescence.   The various scandals throughout its history– the Crusades, the Inquisition, the molestation trials– has left the Church in a state of desperation.  Cardinal Beppi Pelle, however, has concocted a plan.  The church has secretly been funding scientific research and two of their researchers in Geneva have stumbled upon time travel.   Pelle, a man of science himself, sees this as an opportunity to erase the wrongs of the Church and save its dwindling prestige by sending men into the past with the knowledge and resources to change the future.  The concept is a weighty one; is this a God-given mission to bring better virtue and reason to the world or an arrogant Babel scenario made by men who wish to cling to their shrinking power structure?  Even Pope Pius XIII is leery on the project.  Nevertheless, the inner circle of the Vatican reluctantly accept the plan.

A time needs to be chosen.  To go before the resurrection is playing with the legitimacy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  To go after the Crusades is simply far too late, where the schism between Islam and Christianity seals the fate of both.  The decision is placed upon Rome, during the reign of Constantine.  The Pope elects Beppi and an American General named Nicholas Chase to lead the expedition.  Naturally, they are checks and balances, procedures and laws enlisted to ensure abuses of power will not happen.  Of course, once the team embarks on the journey, everything falls apart.

While this is a story about man manipulating the things of God not unlike Frankenstein or Jurassic Park, Hickman at least gives his characters something most don’t: common sense.  The Pope especially is well aware of the potential to abuse this power and attempts all he can to limit any potential damage misuse would bring.  He even removes himself from the decision-making process soon after bringing Chase on board.  All of the characters are, to some extent or another, are cognizant of the vast importance of what can and will happen.  Nevertheless, the Pope’s humility serves as a counterbalance to the ambition of Beppi and the idealism of Chase.  When he exits the story as the time mission begins, his loss of influence brings drastic changes to the events.

As such, the story continues with a collection of very intelligent, well-intentioned individuals who are nonetheless very human and have very different ideas on how to change the world for the better.  Between the politician Beppi, the reformer Chase, and the various personalities in Chase’s inner circle; there are radical and divisive concepts that will irrevocably change everything about everything.  Should the travelers inter-breed with the temporal natives?  What ideas should they introduce?  How fast should they introduce them?  Who of the natives should be trusted with cooperation?  Who needs to be exposed of?  Everyone has their own ideas on what should be done to change history and the result might be catastrophic… or it might be utopian.

The art is done by Hickman himself who uses a very simple pencil style (and feels somewhat similiar to the artwork of Brian Bendis) that is supported by very complex coloring and effects.  The actual penciling is very minimalist: there are no backgrounds and the panels are almost always just the people.  Everything on the page is absolutely necessary to be there.  Instead, the background is filled with a hazy, paint-brushed ambiance that sometimes feels like smoke and other times like the characters are celestial bodies in the universe.  Despite the implications of the latter, the lack of distinct backgrounds forces the reader to focus on the characters and the story at hand rather than the peripherals.  The art also uses a unique spiral pattern in the shading (you can see it in General Chase’s arm up there) that also gives the book a look unlike most else you see.

Hickman also employs a distinct way of distributing information to his readers.  In the same way he did in his earlier work, The Nightly News, Hickman treats the reader’s POV as if they’re reading it with Iron Man’s visor on.  Bits of information pop up in boxes on the pages.  When a character is shot, a diagram appears to show you what bullets went where.  Excerpts of the characters’ writing will appear and many times the more dialog-heavy scenes will revert a recording of the conversation’s minutes in script form.  All of this brings a style that looks like nothing else in comics today.

Pax Romana became the stepping stone for Jonathan Hickman to enter into the Marvel Universe and redefine the worlds of the Fantastic Four and Nick Fury.  His imaginative mind, seen when he sent a Catholic cadre of soldiers and priests into the days of Constantine, has made him one of the biggest commodities to watch in comics today.  His style of art, which has faded at his time at Marvel as he allows others to draw his scripts, shows him to be a unique voice in the industry today.  If you’ve ever watched the History Channel and fantasized about what you could in a time long past with the knowledge and resources of today, Pax Romana is a book to look into.

Sources:

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/574/286878-20373-121857-1-pax-romana_super.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3083/2509112674_39bed3748d.jpg?v=0

http://cache.io9.com/assets/resources/2008/03/paxrom2.jpg

Be Nice, It’s Their First Time.

by Kenny Cooper

Several comic book heroes have become elevated into the modern world’s pop culture mythology.  They have taken a life of their own with distinct and highly identifiable features that become part of the cultural lexicon.  Seinfeld didn’t go an episode without a Superman reference.  A small child in Yamagata, Japan could probably tell you what the Bat-Symbol is.  Anytime I wear my black shirt with concentric circles of red, white, and blue with a white star in the middle, people immediately recognize it as my “Captain America” shirt.  We instinctively know so much about them even if we’ve never read a comic.  Superman has a weakness for Kryptonite.  Batman never kills.  Captain America fought in World War II.  Words like “Bizarro” and “Batmobile” are now standard verbal short-hand for us.  Yet, every legend has to start somewhere.  Looking back at their first issues, it can sometimes be startling how unlike they are to the characterizations we know today.

Superman in Action Comics #1 (June 1938)

Superman debuted at a time when comic books were usually just reprinted collections of newspaper strips, much like the trade paperback does for the comic books of today.  Comics holding original material was fairly new, though Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were forced to do so due to the Antisemitism within the newspaper world.  Superman was just the headliner on the book, only 8 pages in the 64-page book.  Earlier, Siegel and Shuster had published a short story named “Reign of the Superman” which featured a villainous telepath attempting to conquer.  Obviously, the two retooled the name to a powerful hero with the now-famous costume and cape inspired by circus performers and pro-wrestlers. His powers are also scaled far back from they will be.  He can’t fly and mostly just has bulletproof skin, the ability to leap pretty far, and the strength of a bear.

When we first meet the Man of Steel after a single page of his origin, its somewhat jarring from the typical ‘Big Blue Boy Scout’ we all know.  He appears on the estate of the governor late at night with a gagged and bound woman in tow whom he places on the lawn.  He bangs on the door and demands to see the governor.  When the butler protests, Superman manhandles the poor man and rips apart the steel door to the governor’s bedroom as the guy sleeps in his bed.  He tells the governor that an innocent woman is going to be hanged very soon for a murder the woman he left on the lawn committed.  The governor listens and complies but the next day lets his staff know how freaked out he is a man like Superman exists: “Thank God apparently he’s on the side of law and order!”

This version of Superman is really gruff, aggressive and a more social crusader than what we see of a superhero nowadays.  His next assignment is teaching a wife-beater a lesson… by throwing him into the wall so hard, it breaks.  Later, he scares the everloving crap out of some hoodlums that were messing with Lois by thrashing their car, producing the cover image.  Soon, Clark Kent is sent to South America to stir up news but Superman takes the opportunity to head to Washington to take out a corrupt senator who’s looking to spark a war in Europe (this is over a year before Hitler starts WWII).  He ends the issue by taking the senator’s special interest lackey and running along the telephone wires of Washington with him to shake him down for information.  It’s really startling to see Superman like this, a political crusader specifically for the little man who so aggressively attacks the power structures above.  By the time the Comics Code came about, authority figures couldn’t be shown negatively which insured this interpretation wouldn’t survive after World War II ended (during which Superman was as pro-US government as could be).  Nevertheless, it is interesting to see Superman’s roots as the “protector of the oppressed” before he became the upholder of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” and developed a more passive code of conduct against non-powered adversaries.  Still, you’d never see Superman bust into LexCorp and drag a legally innocent Luthor to go skip across phone wires.

Batman in Detective Comics #27 (Spring, 1939)

The Batman here is a costumed vigilante separate from the authority of Commissioner Gordon that preys upon the criminals of Gotham City.  That’s more or less all he shares with the character he’s been shaped into today.  I would even go so far to say the Batman in this debut issue feels more like Zorro than what we’d think of as Batman.  The Bruce Wayne of this story doesn’t seem so much like a jet-flying playboy as much a bored dandy who accompanies Commissioner Gordon on a homicide scene simply because he has nothing better to do.  Save for the last page reveal (yeah, Bruce Wayne is the Batman, sorry to spoil that for you), Bruce Wayne comes across as the most vapidly shallow character writer Bill Finger could make him in the span of four lines.  The character seems to share a lot with the Tyrone Power version of Zorro from that years The Mark of Zorro. The Batman’s (or the “Bat-Man” as the spelling indicates) methods are rather primitive.  There is no Batcave, Batmobile, or Batarangs yet.  Batman’s mode of transportation is a simple red car.  His style is to simply punch criminals until they stop moving.  The costume is still a work in progress.  The gloves are garishly purple while the ears jut out from the side like devil horns; when he’s in profile, the ears blend into the costume and he ends up looking like Space Ghost. The infamous bat-symbol is also missing it’s head. He uses no gadgets outside of a wrench he finds the villain’s factory.

The Caped Crusader is also a little underdeveloped when it comes his famous moral code. When he finds the killer within the story, a chemical businessman (whose name is Alfred, no less!) looking to rub out his partners, Batman pretty much punches the guy into a vat of acid without much thought (unfortunately this guy is a balding, fat guy so, no, he is not the Joker.) “A fitting end for his kind” is all Batman has to say on the matter before taking off again. I must agree with Michael Uslan who mentions that the Batman from the 1989 Tim Burton movie is directly inspired by this very early interpretation of Batman; a very violent (even lethal) vigilante who throws people off his scent by being incredibly aloof and bored in his “Bruce Wayne” life. It’d be about a year or two before Batman really started to bring in all the elements we all know and love about him today– the Batmobile, the gadgets, Robin, the colorful rogues gallery.

Captain America Comics #1 (March, 1941)

This comic was revolutionary at the time.  For one thing, this was the first superhero who didn’t debut in an anthology series; the people at Timely (later called Marvel) were so confident that Captain America would be a big hit, he immediately debuted his own book. The comic was a hotbed of controversy at the time. Now, it seems like the most inoffensively awesome patriotic cover ever, but it debuted in March of 1941, nine months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the Americans into World War II. At the time, most Americans were emphatically opposed to entering into the war in Europe and found a character dressed as like the Stars and Stripes punching out a foreign leader to be extremely offensive. Of course, writer Joe Simon and Jack Kirby didn’t much care and rightfully so. Being Jewish New Yorkers, the two had already heard all of the horror stories of what was happening in Nazi-occupied Europe from the survivors who had escaped it. Timely, being a comic company of the 40′s and therefore predominately Jewish, had already launched out against the Nazis by having the Sub Mariner assaulting U-boats though he was a super-villain/anti-hero. Over at DC, Superman showed up in Look Magazine to snatch Hitler and his then ally Stalin and dropped them off at the League of Nations to end the entire war. However, this was the most outwardly anti-Nazi, pro-war comic at the time. Captain America Comics wasn’t just a feel-good adventure series, it was a bold political statement that went directly against the opinions of the American majority at the time.

While the other two books above were fairly simple in plot, this one is actually a tad more sophisticated. As the draft is being set up for the possibility of war with Germany in the future, Nazi spies blow up American munitions factories. Realizing that Nazi infiltration has infected the US military on a grand scale, FDR has enlisted a Jewish-European refugee Dr. Reinstein to create the Super-Soldier Serum to create super soldiers for the oncoming war. Nazi sabotage kills Reinstein and destroys the serum. Only frail Steve Rogers has taken the serum and becomes Captain America. The entire 65-page issue devoted to Cap (save for two stories on The Hurricane and Tuk the Caveboy) allows for several adventures to take place. The first involves Cap and his sidekick Bucky trying to stop a ring of Nazi spies who use the cover of a fortune-telling act as they blow up various targets on American soil. Of particular note is how, while Cap captures them, he completely fails to stop them blowing up a crowded bridge in time. The next follows a Nazi ring led by a chess obsessed megalomaniac assassinating high-profile generals. Oddly enough, Steve Rogers’ superior doesn’t know who Captain America really is but the Nazi mastermind somehow does. The next story features the debut of Cap’s arch-enemy the Red Skull who promptly dies by rolling on a hypodermic needle wrestling with Bucky. The thing to note is the Jack Kirby art in these stories. While Kirby had not yet perfected his style, the dynamic angles and more complex panel structure gives the book a more interesting look than the DC heroes.

___________________________________________________________________________

It’s interesting how these characters differ in their first appearances from their later established canon and in what ways. In these books, you can even see the basic style of comics hadn’t even really been formed yet–the writing is very expository while the art is often very simple and maybe even a tad crude in comparison to later work even if it still functions to get the point across– much less the characters. While they carry some of the core of what made them icons of the culture, it’s not all there. These characters became melting pots for creator after creator to add their own bits of brilliance to the character. Every decade saw the characters grow a new side; put on a new face. What worked was added into the character and what didn’t was discarded until the character, through all the permutations and interpretations evolved into the character we see today. Still, it’s good to see where the character started off at, blemishes and all, in the start of a journey from new character to icon.

Comic Sources:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug02/yeung/actioncomics/cover.html

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Chronicles-Vol-Bill-Finger/dp/1401204457

https://subscriptions.marvel.com/digitalcomics/view.htm?iid=1652

Photo Sources:

http://cache.coverbrowser.com/image/action-comics/1-1.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/detective-comics/27-1.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/captain-america/1-2.jpg

And Now For Something Completely Terrible…

by Kenny Cooper

In the time I’ve been writing for this site, I’ve tended to steer clear of bad comics to review. There were a few reasons for this. For one, to review it, I’d have to invest time and money into a comic I deliberately will think is bad and that’s no fun. Another reason is that I’d rather inspire an interest in comics in readers rather than a distaste and devoting my time to a comic nobody’s going to want to read makes no sense to me. The last reason is that the “reviewer of bad comics” job is taken by much more capable people than I who can rip a stupid comic book to shreds much better than I can. On top of that, they’ve typically managed to find all the bad comics I would have torn into and shredded it far better than I ever could.

Yet, I’ve wanted to reviewed a bad comic for a while if only for the sake of giving the reader a sense of comparison between the awfully great and the greatly awful. They say it is easier to understand the mechanics of a thing by examining a poor example than it is a good one. That being said, if I’m going to do this, it must be done right. It’s not enough to find a comic with a bad story or bad art. It must be a comic that completely disregards every guideline of what makes a comic book and good comic. This leaves out most of the notoriously bad comics out there such as Frank Miller’s mythically bad All-Star Batman or Kevin Smith’s multifariously terrible Spider-Man/Black Cat which, while incredibly stupid and insulting stories, had been buffered by very good art. At the same time, I’d rather not beat a dead horse. I like my horses to have at least a little life in them when I whack away at them so many of the staples of “bad comics” like the aforementioned All-Star Batman, Sins Past, One More Day, Ultimates, Vol. 3, Chuck Austen’s work on anything, or The Dark Knight Strikes Again just wouldn’t do. However, there is one comic in particular that I gravitated towards in terms of shredding apart that just seemed perfect. While still notoriously bad thanks to one infamous promotional image, the book itself has seen comparatively few scathing reviews… mostly because nobody read it. Yet, it is perfect for this article. The combination of bad writing, bad designs, bad perspective, and bad storytelling come together into a perfect storm of incompetence. That book is Heroes Reborn: Captain America.

Riding his invisible motorcycle always makes his shield warp like that.

In 1996, Marvel made the incredibly stupid bold decision to kill off nearly all of their non-X-Men superheroes and Doctor Doom in their latest X-Men event, the Onslaught Saga. This was used as an opportunity to restart all these books under a new continuity, Heroes Reborn. However, rather than let their own creative staff run these books, Marvel decided to jump on the Image Comics bandwagon a good four years too late and farmed out their books to Image. Jim Lee’s Wildstorm (which I wrote a rather extensive series of articles on a little while back) took over Fantastic Four and Iron Man while Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios took over Avengers and Captain America. Putting Liefeld on the book was possibly the worst choice Marvel could have made. The previous writer, Mark Waid, had turned the book into a smash hit because it was precisely the opposite of the Liefeld-style of comics that everybody was imitating at the time. Furthermore, this was a time when comics readers were really starting to realize how much they’d been bamboozled by Rob Liefeld’s distinct yet technically unsound style and began to turn on him with fury usually reserved for war criminals or Vanilla Ice. Throw in one ridiculously disproportionate promotional image and a lack of professional punctuality and Marvel pulled the plug on Liefeld’s involvement exactly half way in.

They should have pulled it at issue one and it is here I will review this tripe.  The story and art were done by Liefeld himself while the script was done by Jeph Loeb who either makes really good stuff or very bad stuff.  When he’s allied with Liefeld, it’s uniformly the latter. I’ll only be reviewing this one issue because anymore would be frankly impossible without the Ludovico Technique entering the exercise somewhere. The first page is already hilariously inept in more ways than one. The most immediately noticeable is the complete inversion of foreshortening. Most people know that tanks are outright bigger than people. Most people also know when objects are farther away from the point of view, they should shrink as basic foreshortening dictates. Rob Liefeld is not most people.

In the world of Liefeld, the farthest person on the page should be HUGE compared to the tank several feet in front of him and the tiny soldier.  On top, of that, the field is being bombed by fighter jets instead of, well, bombers and are, in fact bombing their own allies instead of the Germans. Granted, they could be Luftwaffe jets but given the jets (or Coke bottles with wings and a tiny propeller) look most like British Seafire jets, I’m going with that.  It’s really hard to figure whether Cap is standing towards us or away from us watching the Brits use flying soda to bomb the Yankees.  It looks like his head is completely facing behind him while the rest of his body is facing head on  towards the reader.  It takes a couple seconds to realize the man was just too lazy to do the face and left it blank and the colorist just made it all blue.  Way to go, guys.

I guess Rob Liefeld finally got tired of drawing guns mid-way through this page and just stopped.

The next couple pages are just close-ups to various parts of Cap’s anatomy as captions reading off the Pledge of Allegiance are shown.  The only thing to say here is I really don’t like the choice to replace the “A” on Cap’s mask with the eagle.  It just looks far too much like the German Parteiadler (the Nazi “Iron Eagle” symbol) to be worn on Captain America.  Cap wakes up in a cold sweat (which only comes from his cheeks and chin) and sits in his bed in the 90′s to show us his hunched back and freakishly elongated left hand.  He contemplates telling his wife Peggy of the WWII flashback he just had but I think personally he should be more concerned about those gigantic veins coming about of his neck.  The guy must drink steroids for breakfast.  Cut to breakfast and he’s enjoying a nice cup of steroids.  He’s really enjoying it, too, with his freakish Joker smile.  His son having pretty much having the exact same face in every panel isn’t helping much either.  Nor is the kid changing from a solid blue collared shirt to a striped T-shirt between panels. And then this panel hits:

Steve Rogers and his wife share everything together. Including one leg.

I really hope this comic doesn’t have a LOT of panels with these many screw-ups but I can’t exactly say I’m expecting that hope to be the case.  Aside from the fact that Rob really didn’t feel bother to give a background here, I think the most obvious thing is the kid.  Altering perspective can be a great and dynamic tool to add excitement to your story but you have to know how to do it.  Otherwise, you get a one-legged kid with no forearms who must Mario jump everywhere he goes with his elephant foot.  Meanwhile, his dad suffers from the same “loss of forearm” disease (Ironically, Liefeld once created a character named Forearm.  He had four arms.  Get it?) and his right leg somehow disappears behind his wife and never reaches the floor.  Though, I should be happy the man’s drawing feet at all and not just putting random boxes or a mound of dirt in front of them.

On the next page, Steve leaves the house in a way I can only describe as “falling off the world.” Because Liefeld can’t be bothered with backgrounds half the time, the floor is just a white plane that stretches on forever so we have no clue where the floor ends. Furthermore, Steve seems to be more parallel with ground with both feet right in front compared to his wife who is perpendicular and clearly standing straight off the ground. It gives the illusion that the ground is actually the wall, everything (including his wife) is glued on and he’s just falling off.  He then goes to work with buddy Nathan, saying “I ever tell you how nuts I am about my wife and son?” Because people actually talk like that.  On the way to work, Steve spots an old man with pure black eyes but he looks so much like Nathan, for a second you think poor Nate got possessed by Satan in mid-drive before you notice the lack of mustache.  Nathan’s already got problems as is.  By lunch, he gains at least a hundred pounds and then grows and promptly sheds a beard all in a single panel.  He seriously needs to see a doctor.  Dude’s got problems.

We then cut to night where Steve is sleeping in front of the TV whilst it plays the “Image of Waving Flag & Random Patriotic Songs” Network and dozes off to dream about himself as Cap attacking Nazis with his patented Flying Crotch Drop maneuver.  As Steve startles himself awake by the sheer homo-eroticism of that little image, he ponders whether he should let his wife know about these dreams.  I’d figure he’d be more concerned that his entire living room save for his TV and chair just vanished and his right leg just grew twice as big as his left  one but “Crotch-Attacks-on-Nazis” dreams hits higher on his priorities.

The next day we are introduced to “Rikki Barnes”, a composite character of Cap’s Golden Age sidekick James “Bucky” Barnes and Cap’s Silver Age sidekick Rick “other Bucky” Barnes to become a new female Bucky. Currently, she’s pissed she can’t get in Julliard on a dance scholarship when her brother John and the most unintentionally disproportionate character I’ve ever seen in a comic show up. “Lunk” appears to have arms that are alone larger than both John and Rikki. It’s a good thing the local Neo Nazi clothing store has a “Big and Freakish” section because the man has enough problems trying to not let his knuckles drag on the ground as he walks. Neo Nazi Bulk and Skull try to tell Rikki she got rejected because the Man has it in for Whitey or something and invites her to come with them to the “World Party” rally that night. Why exactly a blatantly xenophobic, white supremacist political movement calls themselves the “World Party” is beyond me. She rejects them, they take off, and nobody cares.

I guess Bulk and Skull snapped when they realized the Power Rangers weren't all white people and moved to Phillie to join the white supremacists there. Or something.

The scene cuts to a big abandoned cathedral where we are introduced to the figurehead of the World Party, Master Man who looks to be taking advantage of the place’s built in stone throne.  For those unaware, Master Man is basically a Nazi pastiche of Superman from Cap’s WWII days.  Usually he looks like an Aryan with a black body suit with yellow highlights and a swastika symbol; simple but effective.  Here, he looks like Liefeld’s creation Stryfe sans cape and mask and with added swastikas above his pecs.  As far as Nazi super-villains go, he looks really bland and uninteresting. Furthermore, he wears the stupid thing to the rally and has swastika banners up, meaning everybody knows their Nazi connections.  Why would you do this?  You know the American public is hardwired to kick you in the teeth once they realize you have anything but abounding hatred for the Third Reich.  Why in the world would you let them know Hitler was A-OK by you if you’re trying to grab political power through a new party? This plan makes no sense.

Special Agent Hunt slips away from the rally to investigate this place to find it’s nothing but cliche stone walls and staircases.  Eventually though, the background runs out and Hunt finds nukes in a pure white backdrop.  “Where should we put the nukes?” “I dunno… that one spot where the artist got lazy and just stopped drawing is as good a place as any.”  Hunt comes across an off-screen figure who’s pretty obviously the Red Skull who’s now going to kill Hunt.  I guess the big glowing gun Hunt is holding just a flashlight and in no way could shoot the guy.  Bummer.

Steve Rogers is walking the streets that in no way is supposed to be a rip-off of a similar panel in The Dark Knight Returns as his hair grows about to be twice as long as before.  He comes across the guy with black eyeballs again who calls him “Captain” and tells him to follow him.  He’s an old war buddy of Cap’s who wants him to remember his previous life as a superhero which in no way explains why he’s got black demon eyes.  Both fall off the world again outside his basement as Demon Eyes (aka “Abe”) shows Steve his shield.  This act causes the entire room to become a strawberry swirl ice cream sundae and Steve grows twice as tall as before.  Outside, silver Neo-Nazi Spider-Man troopers blow up the house though Steve survives.  He makes short of them, one of them by slashing his shield at his chest despite being 12 feet away.  All through the fight, the shield changes size: from the size of a small pizza to the size of a man and everywhere in between.  The fight is so intense, the background flees and doesn’t come back until it’s all over.  Afterwards, Steve holds a dying Abe in his arms and swears vengeance with the Liefeld scowl.  With that our hero’s story continues next issue though I will not be.

It’s really amazing this kind of stuff was popular back in the early 90′s.  Like M.C. Hammer and Power Rangers, comic fans now look upon Liefeld with a puzzled “WHY did I like this stuff?” these days.  Nevertheless, it’s a perfectly accurate and vaguely amusing example of what can go horribly awry in comics.  Comics should be made with a careful and precise work ethic.  The art should tell the story and at least adhere to the simplest rules of art.  The story should hold some sense of logical coherence.  Bigger is not always better.  “Extreme!” is not always cool.  Hopefully, we as readers and they as an industry have learned from the shame of the early 90′s.  That way, books like this may stay far and away from our present.

Photo Sources:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/showthread.php?18146-Captain-America-swipe-file

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/11307/406622-5776-42979-4-captain-america_super.jpg

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/blogs/latest/entry/little-zack-captain-america-vol-2-1

http://www.dailyraider.com/index.php?id=4035

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/585/neonazibulkandskull.jpg

Christmas Comics: Fa-La-La-La La-La-OH GOD, SANTA’S FIGHTING SATAN!!!!!

by Kenny Cooper

Since Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938, there have been 71 Christmases with the 72nd coming upon us this weekend. In the interim, comics have put a hold on many a storyline for the sake of a holiday special. I thought it’d be fun to highlight a few of the more interesting ones. You might be surprised how many rather notable comic book stories devote at least one issue to the season of giving. Even I was surprised by the amount of Christmas comics I just so happened to have in my collection.

Batman: The Long Halloween #3 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (DC Comics)

The third issue of the classic holiday themed 13-part series, this one is less about Batman’s quest to find the Holiday Killer and more about the Joker’s personal animosity over sharing his spotlight as Gotham’s great nightmare. The story mostly follows the Joker’s day as he starts the day by tying a family and taking all their presents (the CAD!), beating up Harvey Dent in his own home whilst quoting the Grinch before quoting “The Night Before Christmas” at hapless mafia goons before Holiday guns them down.  The Joker’s arc concludes in the next issue set during New Year’s Day but, here, he comes across as a psychotic Ghost of Christmas Evil, making the holiday miserable for civilian, hero, and villain alike.

Bone Holiday Special by Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books)

Included in the “One Volume Edition” of Bone, this holiday special is set right towards the end of the series after the major conflict is over. The Bones and Bartleby spend one last season with Thorn and Gran’ma Ben.  The gang sit around and discuss what they celebrate: Thorn speaks of the evergreen tree brought in to symbolize life surviving in the darkest of winter while Phoney Bone boasts about the increased revenue he brings in each year that day.  Meanwhile, Fone Bone brings a simple yet appropriate gift to the “Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures” that have plagued them all book along.

Daredevil #229 by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli (Marvel Comics)

Christmas isn’t so great for Matt Murdock this year. Right smack in the middle of the landmark story, “Born Again”, the Kingpin has discovered Matt’s secret life as Daredevil and has used his connections to completely destroy his life. Reeling from a beating from the Kingpin himself and barely escaping a watery death trap, a homeless Matt stumbles about the frigid New York landscape only to be shanked by Turk (the resident ineffectual criminal in Daredevil’s world) in a Santa suit while his best friend Foggy and his former girlfriend Glorianna get a little too cozy for the holidays. However, the heavens are looking out for Matt as he collapses in the arms of an old nun that figures heavily into Matt’s past.

Detective Comics #826 by Paul Dini and Don Kramer (DC Comics)

In the midst of Batman: the Animated Series head writer Paul Dini’s hugely acclaimed run on the title, Robin is being swarmed by gunrunners when a mysterious voice in a car yells for him to get in. Seeking salvation, Robin jumps right in without hesitation only to discover the driver is a Santa hat-wearing Joker who promptly gasses him. As he wakes up, he’s been tied to the passenger’s seat with Christmas lights and has a bulb stuck in his mouth like an apple.  The Joker says he just wants to take a holiday stroll with the Boy Wonder and will let him go when the night’s over but Robin knows better.  What follows is a battle of wits complete with desires for egg nog, a Marx Brothers debate, and vehicular homicides.  Lots of vehicular homicides.

JLA #60 by Mark Waid and Cliff Rathburn (DC Comics)

The last issue of Mark Waid’s run on the title, the Justice League’s resident shape-shifting clown is at the home of his best friend Woozy Winks and telling Woozy’s nephew Weezer of the time Santa was honorably inducted into the Justice League.  Santa has noticed a great spike in naughty children and learns Neron (DC’s closest character attempt at portraying a canonical Satan in their book) is at the center of it.  The JLA come to the rescue but Neron turns them into coal and it’s up to Santa alone to save Christmas.  Also, Santa has heat vision.  Yup.

Spider-Man: Tangled Web #21 by Darwyn Cooke and Jay Bone (Marvel Comics)

Tangled Web was a series that ran in the early 2000′s that was more or less the “experimental” Spider-Man title. It had no steady writer or artist and was usually more about the peripheral characters in Spidey’s world than Spidey himself. For the Christmas issue, Darwyn Cooke came in to make a delightfully cartoony romp through Marvel’s New York.  The Daily Bugle is flooded with noisy orphans, a trio of superheroines are on a quest for personal peace and shoe acquisition, and the Puppet Master is running amok in a mall.  Cooke’s artwork really makes this madcap ball of fun really work.  His rendition of J. Jonah Jameson attacking a hapless Spider-Man with an old-school Spider-Slayer is just too funny for words.

Superman (Vol. 2) #165 by Jeph Loeb and various artists (DC Comics)

It’s December 2000 and, in the DC universe, Lex Luthor has just ran away with the November Presidential election in a landslide.  Obviously, Superman is not very happy with this turn of events, his faith in the American people’s electoral decision critically shaken.  Nevertheless, Superman puts on a brave face as he treks across the world, finding his compatriots in the Justice League and gives them their rather simple yet appropriate gifts.  Much of the issue is the JLA’s individual interactions with Superman as they discuss Luthor’s oncoming Presidency.  Each give their own words of encouragement to the Man of Steel.  However, Plastic Man’s words are especially poignant: “What’s worse than Lex Luthor in the White House? Two Lex Luthors in the White House.”

As you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, or whichever, may you and yours have a blessed time full of joy and meaning. Just don’t tie people up and take their gifts. That’s just rude.

Photo Sources:

http://theuniblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/gabatmas051.jpg

http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/iss/600w/703/287031/7371731_1.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/batman-long-halloween

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/daredevil/5

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/detective-comics/17

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/jla/2

http://www.comicvine.com/spider-mans-tangled-web-twas-the-fight-before-christmas/37-114270/

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/superman-1987/4

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3250/3125043547_3aedc97f9c.jpg